The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of San Jose and 37 miles (60 km) southeast of San Francisco. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would become known as Silicon Valley. By 1970, Stanford was home to a linear accelerator, was one of the original four ARPANET nodes, and had transformed itself into a major research university in computer science, mathematics, natural sciences, and social sciences. More than 50 Stanford faculty, staff, and alumni have won the Nobel Prize and Stanford has the largest number of Turing award winners for a single institution. Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many prominent technology companies including Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, LinkedIn, Netscape Communications, Rambus, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Varian Associates, and Yahoo!. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Stanford University)

The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as UC Berkeley, Cal Berkeley, Berkeley, or simply Cal), is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA. Berkeley is the most consistently well ranked university in the world overall as shown by a meta-analysis of subject/departmental data over the last sixteen years from the United States National Research Council, the US News & World Report, and Times Higher Education. Berkeley has the highest number of distinguished graduate programs ranked in the top 10 in their fields by the United States National Research Council. Among other honors, University faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 66 Nobel Prizes, 9 Wolf Prizes, 7 Fields Medals, 15 Turing Awards, 45 MacArthur Fellowships, 20 Academy Awards, and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. To date, UC Berkeley and its researchers are associated with 6 chemical elements of the periodic table (Californium, Seaborgium, Berkelium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Lawrencium) and Berkeley Lab has discovered 16 chemical elements in total - more than any other university in the world (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of California, Berkeley)

The University of Warwick (informally Warwick University or Warwick) is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom. The University was founded in 1965 following a government initiative to expand access to higher education and in 2000 Warwick Medical School was opened as part of an initiative to train more doctors in the UK. The University describes itself as a research led institution and in the last Research Assessment Exercise the University was the 7th highest-ranked research institution in the UK. Warwick is the "2nd most targeted university in the UK by top employers." It is one of only five universities never to have been rated outside the top ten in terms of teaching excellence and research. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Warwick)

The University of Queensland, also known as UQ, is a public university located in Brisbane, Australia. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest university in Queensland and the fifth in the nation. The main campus is located in St Lucia, southwest of the Brisbane CBD. UQ is a member of the Australia's Group of Eight lobby group, and the Universitas 21, an international network of research-intensive universities, and is colloquially known as a "sandstone university". UQ is ranked among the top universities, both in Australia and the world. In 2009, the Australian Cancer Research Foundation reported that UQ have taken the lead in numerous areas of cancer research, having awarded almost $10 million in grants over a three year period. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Queensland)

Queen's University Belfast is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The university's official title, per its charter, is the Queen's University of Belfast. It is often referred to simply as Queen's, or by the abbreviation QUB. The university was chartered in 1845, and opened in 1849 as 'Queen's College, Belfast', but has roots going back to 1810 and the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. Queen's is a member of the Russell Group of the UK's 20 leading research intensive universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, Universities Ireland and Universities UK. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Queen's University Belfast)

Tilburg University is an academic institution of higher education, specialising in the social sciences (especially economics) and law, located in Tilburg in the southern part of the Netherlands. Tilburg University has a student population of about 13,000 students, about 8 per cent of whom are international students. This percentage has steadily increased over the past years. TU offers both Dutch-taught and English-taught programmes. The institution has gained a reputation in both research and education. In the field of economics, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration ranked #1 in Europe for the second consecutive time in 2007 according to the Journal of the European Economic Association with regard to publications in top journals. In 2007 the Executive MBA programme at the university's TiasNimbas Business School ranked # 11 in the world according to the Financial Times. In the field of law, Tilburg University was ranked #1 in the Netherlands for the last three years according to Elsevier Magazine, and came in second to Cambridge University in a ranking of European law schools. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Tilburg University)

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (U of I, UIUC, or simply Illinois) is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system. The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is the second oldest public university in the state, second to Illinois State University, and is a founding member of the Big Ten Conference. It is considered a Public Ivy and is a member of the Association of American Universities. The university is designated as a RU/VH Research University (very high research activities). The campus library system possesses the third-largest university library in the United States and the sixth-largest in the country overall. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Illinois)

Robert Gordon University is located in Aberdeen, Scotland. Building on over 250 years involvement in education, it was granted university status in 1992. Robert Gordon University currently has approximately 16,407 students at its two campuses at Garthdee and the City Centre, studying on over 145 full-time and part-time undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Much of the university campus dates from 17th and 18th centuries. The Robert Gordon University was also voted best modern university in the UK for overall satisfaction by its students in the National Student Survey 2011. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Robert Gordon University)

The University of Pretoria is a multi campus public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was established in 1908 as the Pretoria campus of the Johannesburg-based Transvaal University College and is the fourth South African institution in continuous operation to be awarded university status. The university has grown from the original 32 students in a single late Victorian house to approximately 39,000 in 2010. The University was built on 7 suburban campuses on 1120ha (2767acre). The University is organised into nine faculties and a business school. Established in 1920, the University of Pretoria Faculty of Veterinary Science is the second oldest veterinary school in Africa and the only veterinary school in South Africa. In 1949 the university launched the first MBA programme outside of North America and the university's Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) has consistently been ranked the top business school in Africa for executive education, as well as being placed in the top 50 in the world. In 2012 the Financial Times ranked the GIBS Executive MBA 1st in Africa and 60th in the world. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Pretoria)

Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) is a Higher Education institution in South Yorkshire, England, based on two sites in Sheffield. City Campus is located in the city centre, close to Sheffield railway station, and Collegiate Crescent Campus is about two miles away, adjacent to Ecclesall Road in south-west Sheffield. The university is the sixth largest in the UK, with more than 33,000 students, over 3,200 staff and 572 courses. One of the university's priorities is to promote regional wealth creation through enterprise and knowledge transfer. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Sheffield Hallam University)

Cranfield University is a British postgraduate university based on two campuses, with a research-oriented focus. The main campus is at Cranfield, Bedfordshire and the second is the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom based at Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. The main campus is unique in the United Kingdom for having its own operational airport (Cranfield Airport) next to the main campus. The facilities at the airport are used by Cranfield University's own aircraft in the course of aerospace teaching and research. The university also has connections in India and Australia. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Cranfield University)

Oxford University Press (OUP) is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University has used a similar system to oversee the Press since the 17th century. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Oxford University Press)

Lund University (Swedish: Lunds universitet), located in Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, is one of northern Europe's most prestigious universities and one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, frequently ranked among the world's top 100 universities. The university was founded in 1666 and is the second oldest Swedish university, but can arguably trace its roots back to 1438, when a studium generale was founded in Lund. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Lund University)

Monash University (or simply Monash) is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL. Monash enrolls approximately 39,000 undergraduate and 16,000 graduate students, making it the university with the largest student body in Australia. It also has more applicants than any university in the state of Victoria. Monash is home to major research facilities, including the Australian Synchrotron, the Monash Science Technology Research and Innovation Precinct (STRIP), the Australian Stem Cell Centre, 100 research centres and 17 co-operative research centres. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Monash University)

The University of Sussex is an English campus university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961. The university is currently ranked 8th in the UK, 16th in Europe and 79th in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The Guardian university guide 2012 placed Sussex joint 11th, and the Times Good University Guide 2012 ranks Sussex at 14th place. Sussex is also a founder member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Sussex)

The University of Chicago (U of C, UC, UChicago, or simply Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890. William Rainey Harper became the university's first president, in 1891, and the first classes were held in 1892. It has a reputation of devotion to academic scholarship and intellectualism and is affiliated with scores of Rhodes Scholars and 85 Nobel Prize laureates. The University is considered an "Ivy Plus" institution, denoting a school that competes academically among Ivy League universities (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Chicago)

The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of East Anglia)

The University of Essex is a British campus university with the original and largest campus located near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965. It now consists of 18 main teaching departments and 36 centres and institutes in a wide range of subject areas, including the fields of human rights, law & government. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Essex)

The University for the Creative Arts is a specialist art and design university in the south of England. The university was formed in 2005 as University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester, through the merger of the Kent Institute of Art & Design and Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College. It was granted full university status by the Privy Council in May 2008 and adopted its current name officially in September 2008. The origin of the university lies in a number of independent public art and design colleges in the counties of Kent and Surrey, almost all of which had origins in the Victorian period. In the 1990s these merged to form multi-campus art and design institutes in their respective counties, before merging into one organisation in 2005. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University for the Creative Arts)

The University of Huddersfield is a university located in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It currently has over 23,000 students. The University is a founding member of the Northern Consortium and a member of the Yorkshire Universities. The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Bob Cryan, has previously sat as Chair of this regional Higher Education association. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: University of Huddersfield)